International Travel

My good friend asked me to be his best man. He couldn't find a good woman in the states so he moved to Sydney, AU.
Does anyone have experience booking flights abroad? I am looking for the best way to find a deal on airfare with the least amount of hassle and to make sure we have everything covered. We have our Passports already and will not travel unitl November.
Do it myself or is a travel agent a better idea?
His Fiancee is footing the bill for food and lodging so we just need flights.

I usually use Orbitz or Travelocity. You plug in your cities and dates and they give you a list of flights at various prices and times. You can often choose your seats as well.

If you aren't flying until November, you may want to consider watching prices for a while before you book your flights. They do fluctuate.

I use Orbitz and the other online brokers quite frequently. I have to say though, I've recently had some experiences with Orbitz in particular that caused some serious travel stress -- ie. flight plans changing right up until departure & canceled connections still in the airline's system causing confusion that had to be resolved by a TEAM of people at the gate.

If it were me, I'd price it both ways, using the online brokers as arturo7 mentioned and with an agent. The online brokers can save you some money, but it's quite handy if you experience problems on a trip to simply call your agent and say, take care of it. My Visa card includes travel agency services too, at rates that are competitive with most brick-and-mortar travel agencies. So, that's another option too.

Bing travel will give you a price history chart and recommend if you should wait.

I live in AUS now, but when I was just visiting, I used a local travel agent and got a return flight from Minnesota for $800. 3 months later the same flight was $1290. I would use a couple of local agents and have them look, then look online yourself. I bet you find out that the agent is damned close if not cheaper, and they do all of the work....

I have used many different sites through the years (expedia, travelocity, orbitz) and I now only use Kayak.com. You don't actually book the ticket through them, instead they check all of the online sites for you and then give you the cheapest fare. You can check out price history graphs and such as well. I find it very useful to quickly check prices (and I feel like they include more airlines than other sites do.)

2nd for Bing. Price history tells you if you should wait or buck up now. Pricing to Oz has been at 2-3 year lows lately, though. Stay awake for at least 24 hrs before that flight too. The more of it you can sleep through the better. 18 hrs from LA is BRUTAL

Thanks Everyone. Looks I shall have a multi pronged approach.
Bing did not offer me the price history though so I signed up for daily updates. It is as low as I have seen it ($1250 RT) right now so i might pull the trigger soon. Unless anyone thinks I should wait a little bit sinceit is 6 months away.

AUS Dollar has dropped to a 13 month low compared to the US Dollar....

I've found Kayak.com to be great but Mobissimo.com tends to be a little better for international sometimes.

Not sure where you live or what dates in Nov, but Kayak's cheapest was $1250, Mob's was $1237, and they both opened new windows for Priceline which had the cheapest of all at $1105 when I typed in Seattle-Sydney, Nov 9-16.

I checked Mobissimo and it showed the same, but considerably cheaper in August. Does anyone know if they might come down a bit before Nov. or am I paying prime rate because of the dates?

Bought 2 tickets for $1100 ea. Could have been a few buck less but I chose to fly Virgin which is a little extra. Thanks for the help.